


Take Offs and Landings

by bog_witch



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-23 02:10:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13777470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bog_witch/pseuds/bog_witch
Summary: Alex and Amos, after Ganymede.





	Take Offs and Landings

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Claire for the amazing beta work. Title from the Rilo Kiley album, because it will always be 2001 in my heart.
> 
> Contains some references to _The Churn_ and Amos's backstory in general. Nothing explicit, but YMMV.

The doc did a decent job patching him up, but Amos still feels like shit. The adrenaline rush that’s been sustaining him for the last few hours is wearing off, leaving him with a splitting headache from the sedatives and a deep, gnawing pain in his shoulder. He’s dead on his feet, ready to collapse from exhaustion. Fortunately, they’ve all agreed to put the repairs off until he and Holden have had time to recover, so he’s got the night to himself, and he’s looking forward to sleeping it off.

So it’s just his luck that, the moment he’s settled into his bunk, there’s a chime at the door. Naomi, he figures, wanting to apologize some more for drugging him, even though he’s already told her he ain’t mad. He gets up, wincing at the throbbing in his head, and hits the panel to open it. He doesn’t want to have this conversation again. Didn’t want to have it the first time, but he can’t say no to Naomi.

It’s not Naomi. Instead, Alex fucking Kamal walks in, and Amos has never been very good at reading people, but he looks nervous as hell. Amos can’t help but put his guard up: he’s pretty sure he and Alex are good now – the man baked him a lasagna, for fuck’s sake – but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious. He crosses his arms over his chest, and waits for Alex to explain what he’s doing here.

“Hey,” Alex says, like he just wants to have a casual conversation. “So, uh, how’s your – ” he gestures vaguely at Amos’s injured shoulder.

“Better,” Amos says. It’s not a lie; he is doing a hell of a lot better than he was when he and Naomi first got back on the Roci, though that isn’t saying much.

“That’s good.” Alex glances at the floor for a moment, then back at Amos. “Look, I’m going to try something, and I realize there’s a fifty-fifty chance you’re going to punch me in the face, but I want to do it anyway. All right?”

“Okay?” Amos says, because he has no idea how to respond to that.

Alex steps towards him, and Amos tenses, half expecting Alex to kick him in the balls. He thinks Alex is smarter than that, but he can’t be sure. He definitely isn’t expecting Alex to kiss him. It’s a shock, but a good one, and the adrenaline that he thought was gone rushes back like he’s been shot full of juice in preparation for high g. This is something he understands. Something he’s good at.

“So, are you gonna punch me or…?” Alex says, when they finally break the kiss. He’s half-joking, laying the Mariner drawl on thick for effect, but Amos can hear the nervous edge in his voice. Alex is still afraid of him.

“Do you want me to?”

Alex huffs out a laugh that’s more relief than humour. “Nah, I’m good.”

Amos crowds him against the bulkhead before kissing him again, this time with one hand braced against the wall and the other tangled in Alex’s hair. That grants him the leverage he needs to deepen the kiss, and he coaxes Alex’s mouth open, licks at his bottom lip then bites it, just a bit, to gauge Alex’s reaction. Alex doesn’t make any noise, but he doesn’t try to get Amos to stop, either, and when Amos gets one thigh between Alex’s legs he can feel his cock hardening.

He grinds his thigh against Alex, their bodies pressed together, and Alex tips his head back against the wall and groans. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe it’s just been too long since he got laid, but it’s just about the hottest thing Amos has ever seen. His dick gets hard so fast his head spins.

“Holy shit,” Alex says, breathing hard, “holy shit.”

Amos chuckles and unzips his coveralls, stripping to the waist. There’s a sudden stab of pain in his shoulder when he lifts his arms to take his shirt off, and he sucks in a breath, leaning against the bulkhead – against Alex – to steady himself.

“Shit, are you all right?” Alex asks. He rests his hand on Amos’s arm, just below the bandage.

“I’m fine.”

“’Cause if you want to stop – ”

Amos kisses him again, partly to shut him up and partly just because it feels good – the wet heat of his mouth, the surprising softness of his beard against Amos’s own rough stubble. He palms Alex’s dick through his pants; he’s fully hard now, hot even through layers of fabric. This is going to be fun.

“You good?” Amos asks. Alex nods, fumbling with the zipper on his own jumpsuit.

He knows it’s weird, doing this here against the wall when his bunk is just a few metres away. He sees Alex glancing at it, even, and kisses him again just so he won’t say anything. Amos has never fucked in that bed, and he’s not sure he wants to. No one other than Naomi has been in his cabin since he claimed it.

Alex’s hands are shaking a little and Amos isn’t feeling real patient, so he gets the zipper down himself, pulls Alex’s coveralls down to his hips, and reaches inside his boxers to wrap a hand around his hard cock.

“God _damn_ it, Amos,” Alex says. His dick twitches in Amos’s hand.

“What, you want me to stop?” Amos teases, smirking a little.

“No, fuck you, no.” Amos starts jerking him, slowly, with a little twist of his wrist the way he knows most guys like. “Fuck, yes,” Alex says, “keep doing that, just like that, _fuck_.”

His own dick is starting to chafe a bit, and he can’t really grind against Alex while he’s jerking him off, so he whips it out, pulls Alex’s shorts down, and wraps his hand around them both. He’s leaking enough that he doesn’t even have to spit in his palm to ease the way. Alex grips his ass with one hand and starts to move his hips in quick, stuttering thrusts.

This isn’t going to last long. Alex is already out of control, hips bucking wildly, a constant stream of profanity coming out of his mouth. Amos can feel his own orgasm building, too, getting closer with every slick slide of his dick against Alex’s. He speeds his hand up a bit, and he’s _right_ there, he can feel it –

Alex slams his head back against the bulkhead, so hard it’s got to hurt. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , Amos, I’m gonna – ” and then he’s coming, shooting all over Amos’s chest and his own t-shirt. Amos is right behind him; he buries his face in Alex’s neck as he comes, and just for a moment the world around them is quiet and still.

It takes him a while to come back to himself. He realizes he’s leaning most of his weight into Alex, largely because he’s not sure he can trust his legs to support him, even in the low g.

“Fuck,” Alex says, “that is not how I expected that to go.” He looks completely wrecked – lips swollen, hair a mess, shirt streaked with come. The sight of him makes Amos wish he had in him to go again.

“Sorry about your shirt,” Amos says.

Alex shrugs, strips his shirt off and hands it to Amos.

“Thanks.” He wipes the come off his hands, his chest, his dick – he’s still going to need a shower later, but at least he’s a bit less sticky now – then strips naked, because there’s no point getting dressed when he’s not planning on staying conscious for much longer. “Gotta get some sleep,” he tells Alex.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. I’ll, uh…” He trails off, staring at Amos’s naked body. Amos can’t help but laugh. He’s finally gotten Alex to shut up, and it turns out all he had to do was take his clothes off.

He’s about to collapse into his bunk when Alex puts a hand on his hip and kisses him again. It’s gentler than before, like kissing is an end in itself. That’s not something Amos is used to.

And then Alex is gone, cabin doors sliding shut behind him. Amos falls asleep before he has a chance to think too much about any of it.

\---

They burn towards Tycho Station at a quarter g. Amos spends most of the trip belowdecks with Naomi, doing whatever repairs they can to keep the ship from falling apart before they dock. It’s heavy work, and Amos is in his vac suit more often than he’s out of it, barely undressing before collapsing into his bunk at the end of a sixteen-hour shift.

Alex is just as busy, keeping what’s left of the _Roci_ from crashing into anything before they reach the station, so they don’t see much of each other. When they do, they mostly talk shop over hurried cups of noodles in the galley. They don’t talk about the night after Ganymede – maybe because Alex knows better by now than to try to force a conversation on Amos, or maybe because there’s nothing to talk about. Doesn’t matter, as far as Amos is concerned. He likes that things are normal, or as normal as they can be.

It hadn’t occurred to Amos before, him and Alex hooking up, but it makes sense now that he thinks about it. They’re living in close quarters, ending up in life-or-death situations almost every other day, and their relationship has been volatile from the start, going from friendly to strained at a moment’s notice. Of all the things that could have come of that, an adrenaline-fuelled hand job is probably the best-case scenario. It probably won’t happen again. Amos rarely has sex with people he knows; even less often with people he likes. Normally he pays for it, because it’s convenient and because professionals are usually pretty easy to get along with. Everyone knows exactly what to expect.

Still, on the couple of occasions he has the energy to jerk off, he finds himself thinking about Alex – those deep, bruising kisses, the hard heat of his dick against Amos’s own, the look on his face after Amos got him off – even though normally he doesn’t think about anything at all. He doesn’t feel one way or another about that, but it makes him come quicker than he has in a long time. Puts him straight to sleep afterwards, too, and he needs the rest.

\---

Last time they docked for repairs on Tycho, Fred Johnson had a whole team of engineers and mechanics working on the _Roci_ at his own expense. Amos isn’t clear on the details of what went down between then and now – that’s Holden’s business, not his – but they’re on their own this time. They’re able to hire a couple of guys off the docks to help with the more menial work, but mostly it’s left up to Amos and Naomi to turn the wreck of the _Roci_ into something that would survive more than a couple of weeks under thrust.

Normally, Amos would spend some of his downtime on the station, blow a bit of scrip in the bars and brothels, but he doesn’t much feel like it. Everything that happened last time he was on Tycho is a bit too fresh in his memory – that kid and Cortazar and the forty-eight hour bender he went on afterwards, ending with him almost throwing Alex over a railing – and he’s not in the mood to revisit it. He figures it’s best to stay on the ship and get as much of the repair work done as he can.

He’s helping Naomi weld a new sheet of metal to the outer hull when Alex’s voice comes in over the comm link. “Hey, Amos,” he says.

Amos acknowledges him with a grunt. Naomi’s just a few metres away from him, face hidden by her EVA helmet. She doesn’t seem to have heard Alex. He must be on a private channel.

“You better be treatin’ her right,” Alex says, and it takes Amos a moment to realize he’s talking about the _Roci_. “She deserves it, after what she’s been through.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, “she does.”

“You doin’ anything tonight?” Alex asks.

“Sleeping, probably,” he says. He’d like to spend the evening getting more work done, but Naomi’s got some kind of meeting on the station that she won’t talk about, and the hull is a two-man job. He might as well take his rest while he can get it.

“Okay, good. ‘Cause I’ve been runnin’ flight sims all day and I need a break. I figure you do too, so,” he pauses, almost like he’s out of breath, “I was wondering if I could cook you dinner.”

“More lasagna?”

“I was thinkin’ steak, actually. I heard about a guy on the station who sells good cuts of meat – tank-grown, but real beef. Thought I might check it out. What do you think?”

That gets Amos’s attention. There isn’t a lot of meat out here in the Belt, tank-grown or otherwise. “Sure,” he says.

“Great. Meet you in the galley at 1900 hours?” Amos grunts again, this time in assent. “Looking forward to it,” Alex says before closing the channel.

Huh. Amos doesn’t really know how this shit works, but he’s pretty sure he just agreed to let Alex take him on a fucking date.

\---

The first thing Alex does when Amos enters the galley is hand him a beer. “Mars’s finest,” he says, “from my personal stash.” It’s an actual can, not a bulb, and it takes Amos a second to remember how to open it.

Amos is generally more of a liquor drinker, but the beer is good. Alex has three separate pans on the stove, and vegetables on the counter that Amos hasn’t seen since he left Earth. He considers offering to help out, but he can’t cook for shit and Alex would probably get sick of having to explain everything to him. He takes a seat at the table instead, and drinks while he watches Alex work.

“How do you want it done?” Alex asks.

Amos can’t remember the last time he had steak – his diet over the last decade and a half has been pretty consistently made up of shitty ration packs and fungus-based noodles – and he definitely can’t remember how he likes it. “Medium, I guess,” he says, because it sounds normal.

“Aw, come on, you can’t make me do that! This is good meat,” Alex says, holding up one bloody steak as if for emphasis. “Overcook it and it might as well be synthetic protein. How does medium-rare sound?”

Amos shrugs. “Sure.”

“You won’t regret it,” Alex says, and returns to cooking with the same singular focus he has when he pilots the ship.

The steak is better than anything Amos has eaten in recent memory, including Alex’s lasagna, which he liked enough to eat half a tray of it on the way to Ganymede. It’s so good that Amos is halfway through eating his when he realizes that Alex hasn’t touched his own and is just sitting there, watching him.

“What?” he asks through a mouthful of meat.

“Well, I was going to ask if you liked it, but – ”

Amos cuts himself another piece. “Yeah, it’s pretty good.”

“Pretty good, huh? High praise from Amos Burton. I guess you’re used to the real thing, bein’ from Earth and all.”

“Nah,” Amos says, taking a sip of beer. “Not a lot of steak where I come from.” This conversation is getting dangerously close to shit that Amos doesn’t talk about. He tries to smile through it.

“You’ve gotta try Martian beef sometime. It’s -” He stops. “Shit, that didn’t sound right, did it?” He looks genuinely embarrassed, and Amos can’t help but laugh. Alex closes his eyes and shakes his head, but he’s laughing, too. “Okay, okay, let’s talk about something else. Did I ever tell you how I got the _Roci_ down to the surface of Ganymede without gettin’ shot down by the MCRN?”

Alex is easy to talk to, when he remembers to mind his own business. Amos doesn’t understand half the shit he’s saying about vectors and trajectories, but he likes hearing about the _Roci_ and what she can do. It’s a good feeling, knowing he helped make all of that possible.

They have a couple more beers and shoot the shit for a while, same as they’ve been doing ever since they joined the _Roci_. Amos offers to help Alex clean up, once they’re done eating, but Alex refuses and washes the dishes while telling a story about a run-in he had with pirates back when he was flying for the MCRN. It’s probably exaggerated, if not completely made up, but Amos is pleasantly buzzed and in a good mood all around so he doesn’t much care.

“You know,” Alex says, drying his hands. He’s not wearing his wedding ring, Amos notices; it’s the first time he’s seen him without it. “I’ve got some more beers in my cabin, if you want.”

That’s got to be the most obvious come-on Amos has ever heard – and he’s heard a few – but it’s not like he isn’t interested. “Sure, what the hell,” he says. “I got nowhere to be.” The anticipation that washes over him is the same kind he gets when he’s expecting a good fight. It leaves him calm, but focused. Alert. He’s intensely aware of Alex’s movements as he follows him down to the crew deck. He watches the shift of his muscles under his MCRN t-shirt, itching to get his hands on him.

Alex’s bunk is so neat and empty that it’s hard to believe anyone lives there. Amos chalks some of that up to leftover military discipline, but he expected Alex to have a few personal effects on display.

Alex hands him a beer – not as cold as the ones in a galley, but Amos isn’t picky – and starts fiddling with his hand terminal.

“Did you want to watch a movie, or something?” he asks. “Holden sent me a couple of those space gladiator movies he likes.”

“Or we could fuck.”

Alex slams his terminal down with just a bit too much force. “Yeah. Let’s do that instead.”

He lets Alex push him down onto the bed as he kisses him, already feeling the familiar rush of arousal rising in his belly. Alex likes to take his time, apparently. There’s no urgency to any of his movements; he runs his hands over Amos’s body like he wants to memorize every inch of him. Amos doesn’t mind, but he can’t help but push things a bit. He fucks Alex’s mouth with his tongue, grabs his ass to rut up against him and feel Alex’s dick hardening against his hip. Alex doesn’t complain.

“Been thinkin’ about this since Ganymede,” he whispers against Amos’s jaw. It occurs to Amos that he has been, too.

It’s awkward getting undressed in such a small space. Neither of them can sit up all the way without hitting their heads on the top bunk, and it’s not easy getting out of his coveralls with Alex’s weight on top of him – but they manage, and the feel of Alex’s bare skin against his own is worth it. He wraps a hand around Alex’s dick just to feel the heat of it, and Alex thrusts against him, gripping his hips hard enough that he’ll probably have bruises in the morning. The thought makes Amos’s dick jerk and spit pre-come onto his stomach.

“Got any lube?” he asks.

Alex’s eyes widen just a fraction. “Yeah. Gimme a sec.”

He gets off the bunk and opens one of the lockers, then throws a small bottle at Amos. The low g makes the bottle fall in a slow arc, and Amos catches it easily. He’s already got his fingers slicked by the time Alex gets back to the bed. Alex looks like he’s about to say something, but he goes quiet when Amos starts fucking himself with two lubed fingers.

It hurts more than he was expecting. He hasn’t been fucked in a long time, and he probably should have started slower. He breathes deeply and tries to relax, tries to find pleasure in the stretch and burn of it. His body will adjust fast enough. Always has.

Alex is watching him, his mouth open and eyes dark with arousal. He’s got one hand on Amos’s thigh, fingers twitching like he’s trying not to move them. Amos holds his gaze as he adds a third finger. It still hurts, but he can handle it. He doesn’t want to wait any longer.

He tosses the lube to Alex before turning over onto his stomach. “You sure you’re ready?” Alex says, sounding way too concerned for a guy who’s about to stick his dick in Amos’s ass.

“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ ready. Come on.”

He hears the bottle open, then the squelching sound of Alex getting his dick slicked up, and then finally, _finally_ feels the press of it against his hole. “Are you gonna fuck me, or what?” Amos asks when Alex doesn’t move any further.

“You are really goddamn impatient, you know that?” Alex says, but he starts pushing in, still too careful, stopping once the head of his cock has breached Amos’s rim. There’s a hitch in his breath and then he says, “Can I – ”

“Yeah, do it,” Amos interrupts, and then Alex is balls deep inside him and he fucking _whimpers_ into the sheets, every nerve in his body lighting up with the combined pain and pleasure.

Alex starts fucking him for real, _finally_ , deep, even strokes that are almost but not quite what Amos needs. He spreads his knees a little wider, lifts his ass up a bit, and then Alex is hitting his prostate with every thrust, and all Amos can do is clutch at the sheets and take it. He’s dimly aware of Alex saying something – something obscene and incoherent, probably – but all he can focus on is Alex’s thick cock fucking into him, Alex’s hands on his hips, the increasingly brutal rhythm of their bodies moving together.

Amos is pretty sure he could come just from this, but Alex’s lubed hand around his dick is what seals the deal and he collapses onto the bunk, gasping and shuddering as Alex strokes him through it. Alex doesn’t let up even as Amos goes limp beneath him; he keeps thrusting, hard and erratic, and when he comes he drapes himself over Amos’s back and presses sloppy-open-mouthed kisses to his neck and shoulders. Amos shivers, startled by the intimacy of it.

Alex stays on top of him like that just long enough for it to become uncomfortable, and Amos is about to protest when Alex rolls off him with a groan and makes his way over to the head. He comes back with a wet washcloth, which Amos accepts gratefully. Alex’s military-neat bunk is a mess now, rumpled sheets damp with various bodily fluids, but Alex doesn’t seem to care much. He even throws the washcloth onto the floor when Amos is done with it.

Amos eyes the clothing scattered around the cabin, trying to figure out which pieces are his and which are Alex’s. Alex must notice, because the first thing out of his mouth once he settles back onto the bunk is, “You can stay, if you want. It ain’t exactly a king bed, but – ” he shrugs “ – I’d like it, if you stayed.”

Amos hesitates. He’s not opposed to sharing a bed – sometimes he’ll even hire someone for a whole night at a brothel just so he can sleep there afterwards, but that’s different. The people he shares those beds with are strangers, mostly. They’re usually gone by the time he wakes up in the morning.

Then again, his body is falling into that boneless, blissed-out sort of exhaustion that he always feels after he’s been fucked right. Getting dressed and going back to his cabin doesn’t seem worth the effort when there’s a bed right here.

He grunts in agreement and lets Alex settle in behind him, chest against Amos’s back. Alex pulls the covers up over them and splays one hand on Amos’s stomach, gentle and just a bit possessive. It’s a matter of seconds before he’s asleep, breath slow and even against the back of Amos’s neck. It’s more comfortable than Amos expected. He’s right on the edge of sleep himself when it occurs to him, dimly, that the last person who held him like this was Lydia.

The next thing he knows he’s in his own cabin, alone and still stark naked. His heart is pounding, his mouth is dry, and he has no memory of leaving Alex’s bunk and coming here.

 _What the fuck?_ Amos knows that he’s fucked in the head, that he’s got some wires crossed that can’t ever be uncrossed, but this isn’t the kind of shit that happens to him. He doesn’t know what to do about it. His first impulse is to get into a fight. It wouldn’t be hard to do; he’s a big, mean-looking Earther and he wouldn’t have to go far on Tycho to find someone who had a problem with that. He knows Naomi would be upset, though, and he doesn’t want to upset Naomi. Instead he gets dressed, puts on a pair of spare mag boots, and heads down to the machine shop.

\---

“Have you been here all night?”

Amos looks up, squinting at the harsh light of the ship’s day cycle. It’s so bright he can’t really make out Naomi’s face – just the outline of her tall, thin body against the lights, arms crossed in front of her. He can smell coffee brewing in the galley, which means Holden must be awake, too, and he realizes he has no idea how long he’s been down here.

“Yeah,” he says, casually, like it’s a normal thing, pulling an all-nighter to work on minor repairs. “Lost track of time. Hatch seals are looking good, though.”

Naomi nods. “Alex wants to talk to you,” she says. “He didn’t say what it was about.”

Amos looks back down at the hatch seal he’d been checking, feigning interest even though it’s pretty clear there’s nothing wrong with it. “He’ll find me if he wants to. Ain’t that big of a ship.”

The truth of it is that he knows he’ll snap if Alex pushes him too hard, for answers or anything else. Given how on edge he is that could end really fucking badly. He wishes he could disappear for a while, but that would probably just make things worse. Besides, the _Roci_ needs him.

Naomi gives him one of those sad looks she gets sometimes, like she wishes she could fix whatever’s wrong with him. “You should get some rest. I can finish up here.”

He shakes his head. “This is way below your pay grade. You go do something important, leave the grease monkey work to me.”

Naomi reaches over and squeezes his hand, just for a moment. “I’ll get you some coffee,” she says.

She gets on foot on the ladder then pauses, turns back to face him. “Amos, you and Alex – ”

“Not right now, boss.”

Naomi nods. She always knows when to stop asking questions.

Alex, to his credit, at least waits a few hours before tracking Amos down in the newly repressurized cargo bay. He looks like shit – dark circles under his eyes, hair sticking up in every direction – and he won’t stop fidgeting, fingers rubbing at the spot where his ring used to be. Amos avoids looking straight at him.

“Hey,” Alex says. He doesn’t wait for Amos to respond. “Look, I know that you and I are never going to have heart-to-heart conversations about our feelings, and I get that the shit you’ve been through is none of my business, okay? I just – last night, did I do anything that you weren’t okay with? That’s it. That’s all I need to know.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, even though he knows it’s not an answer.

“Okay,” Alex says. “How can I help?”

“What?”

“My girl here obviously needs some TLC. Figured I’d be more useful here than sitting on my ass running flight sims.” He shrugs. “I’m no mechanic, but I can do basic repairs and I can take orders. Just point me where you want me.”

It’s not a bad idea. Reattaching the flooring is a two-man job, and Amos is having a hell of a time of it without Naomi. “All right,” he says. “You ever operated a welding rig?”

Alex may not be a mechanic, but he’s a quick study and good with his hands, so Amos doesn’t end up having to give him too many directions. They work quietly and efficiently, putting their ship back together piece by piece.

“It wasn’t the sex,” he tells Alex at the Blauwe Blome that evening. They’re four drinks in, and normally Amos wouldn’t be feeling it that much, but lack of sleep has apparently affected his ability to hold his liquor. He wouldn’t be saying any of this otherwise. “It was after. Reminded me of someone.”

“Someone who hurt you?”

“No,” Amos says, suddenly defensive – and then it occurs to him that he isn’t sure. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He never thought about it that way at the time, but his perspective has changed.

He motions for the bartender – a pretty Belter girl with wild hair and at least two OPA tattoos – to pour him another drink. She glares at him, but complies. Could be that she she remembers last time they were here, when Amos broke a bottle over some asshole’s head, or could be that she just doesn’t care much for inners. Whatever it is, it’s not worth losing out on scrip. Amos downs the shot in one go, wincing at the burn of the cheap alcohol.

He thought he had at least a few good memories, of his life back on Earth. Now that he’s looked at them more closely, turns out they’re just as fucked up as everything else.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alex asks, carefully, like he knows it could all blow up in his face at a moment’s notice.

“Nope,” Amos says, trying his best to sound amiable and not tense. He tries to get the bartender’s attention, but she’s all the way at the other end of the bar chatting up a couple of heavily scarred and tattooed space buckers, and Amos is pretty sure nothing good will come of getting in the middle of that. He looks at Alex, instead, trying to think of something to say. “There’s shit you don’t know about me,” he manages, eventually.

“I know that, Amos. I’m all right with it. If you – ”

“What I mean is,” Amos interrupts. He hates that they’re having this conversation. He wants to walk out of here, wants to smash a bottle over the head of the next asshole who looks at him sideways, wants to drag Alex into the back room and fuck him until neither of them can talk anymore. “I don’t think that I can be what you want me to be.”

Alex shakes his head. “I know what I’m getting into.”

“Do you?”

“If I wanted something safe I’d be back on Mars enjoying my retirement. I _tried_ that. It made me fuckin’ miserable. But this – the _Roci_ , and you, and all the crazy shit we’ve gotten into – this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Huh,” Amos says, staring into his empty glass. “Me too.” It’s strange hearing himself say it, even if it is the truth. It occurs to him that he and Alex are more alike than he thought. They both travelled halfway across the system to get away from the people they used to be. Their reasons might be different, but they ended up in the same place. In the same tribe.

“But,” Alex adds, “if I want to cook you a nice dinner every once in a while, I hope you’ll humour me.”

Amos’s smile is as genuine as it’s ever been. “This place is a shithole,” he says. “Let’s go home.” He reaches for Alex’s hand almost unconsciously. It’s not something he normally does, but it feels right.

Alex’s fingers tighten around Amos’s own. “Right behind you, partner.”


End file.
